What is the minimum sat score that you have to get in order to be accepted for a top 20 college in the states like harvard and stanford?

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2100 or higher but you also have to show leadership skills such as doing intership in Congress over summer(example) and such. Or be one of the top 20 Juniors in the country in your respective sport, ie tennis. basketball, golf etc. I heard handful of HS students got a perfect SAT score, wonder if they had copies of SAT weeks before the test.

1350 or higher but you also have to show leadership skills such as doing intership in Congress over summer(example) and such. Or be one of the top 20 Juniors in the country in your respective sport, ie tennis. basketball, golf etc.

Yes i was, we used 1400 scale when i was in HS. anyway, dont put so much pressure on yourself to get into ivy school. it is not a make or break. Most of truly brilliant and successful people in the world did not go to ivy league.

Yes i was, we used 1400 scale when i was in HS. anyway, dont put so much pressure on yourself to get into ivy school. it is not a make or break. Most of truly brilliant and successful people in the world did not go to ivy league.

Yes i was, we used 1400 scale when i was in HS. anyway, dont put so much pressure on yourself to get into ivy school. it is not a make or break. Most of truly brilliant and successful people in the world did not go to ivy league.

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WTF is a 1400 scale? The scale before the new test was 1600.

BTW there are no minimums. The range is broad but skewed towards the higher end. I know people who got into IVYs with less than 1350 (old scale). My high school had 5 accepted to Stanford, 4 to Harvard, 3 to Yale and Princeton and 2 to Dartmouth, Cornell and Brown. There are somethings that give you brownie points- legacy admits and minority status.

You do not have to be one of the top 20 juniors in your respective sport. Ivy league has ZERO top 20 juniors in basketball, football, baseball. Ivy league doesn't give out athletic scholarships so it is pretty unusual for them to land a top talent especially in a "major" sport.

Anyway, I got accepted to Dartmouth and the high ranked LACs I applied to such as Pomona and Harvey Mudd -- along with lower, yet still highly ranked schools, such as Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins. My SAT on the 1600 scale was a 1500, and on the 2400 scale was a 2240. At some schools, a perfect SAT will likely get you in (provided a good GPA and decent extracurriculars), but at some such as Harvard or Princeton, many 2400 applicants are rejected.

I'd say a more realistic score would be around the same for such schools; extracurriculars and essays are also heavily factored. And no, you don't really have to have done an internship at Congress to be eligible.

^^^^^^ lol crap, I'm asian. I hope I can cut it for a school like yale or harvard. How much does being class president do for someones chances?

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My advice would be to only apply to schools that you actually want to go to instead of just applying for all the so-called "elite" schools. What grade are you in? And what are you looking for in a school -- maybe I'd be able to help you narrow the list down.

And besides, with such 'elite' schools, it's difficult to make predictions anyway because admissions are such a gamble nowadays, a crapshoot.

I wouldn't worry too much about getting an undergraduate degree from an elite school. Some schools may have better facilities/teachers, but there are many non-elite schools that will give you a great education.

So I guess your classmates were not good enough to get into Columbia and Penn, huh? LOL

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Well we were a California school so people weren't going across the country unless there was some type of pretige name attached to the school. Most stayed UC system. But yes I don't know anybody who applied to Penn or Columbia. Not sure why- could be that Penn was considered lower tier Ivy not better than many schools on the west coast and Columbia was too close to the ghetto. But that's just a guess.

My advice would be to only apply to schools that you actually want to go to instead of just applying for all the so-called "elite" schools. What grade are you in? And what are you looking for in a school -- maybe I'd be able to help you narrow the list down.

And besides, with such 'elite' schools, it's difficult to make predictions anyway because admissions are such a gamble nowadays, a crapshoot.

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I'm a sophmore. I'm up there in terms of academics and already got a 2250 on SAT so I could go to a camp to take a course in chem so I can go to AP bio this year. I'll also be going to AP calc.

I would shoot for at least 2200 for the top-tier private schools (meaning, if you scored lower, then study again and retake).
MTChong is right in that acceptance to Ivy's and such are a crapshoot now; you never know what you're going to get. Had a friend accepted into Harvard and Princeton, but was rejected by Brown University, of all schools (sociology major).
My SAT was at 2300, and I needed every single point of it because of my low GPA (3.8 unweighted...).

dave333, there is a yearly program for Congress internships. I received an invitation a couple years ago, but I forget what it's called. I do think they send invitations based on merit, but whether it's through counselor recs, grades, or participation (I did JSA and speech, so maybe it was through that). A Google search should get you somewhere.